Jack Lemmon, one of America's finest and best loved actors, died this morning at the age of 76. Sources suggest that the actor died from complications from cancer. Lemmon had been ill for several years and underwent gall bladder surgery last month.

Born in an elevator, the son of a doughnut factory boss, Lemmon's life was never going to be ordinary. After studying at Harvard and a spell as a Navy ensign, he set out for Hollywood, where he made his name as a gifted comic actor. A warm, mercurial player, he remains best known for his roles as a cross-dressing jazzman in 1959's Some Like it Hot and the fussy roommate to a slobbish Walter Matthau in 1968's The Odd Couple.

But Lemmon was an expert at more heavyweight, dramatic roles too. He impressed as a lowly office drone in Billy Wilder's The Apartment and graduated to a string of well-regarded pictures including The China Syndrome, Missing and Days of Wine and Roses (based, Lemmon said, on his own experiences with alcoholism). He won two Oscars, scooping Best Actor Oscar for his tour-de-force in the controversial Save the Tiger (1973) and a best supporting actor award for Mr Roberts (1955).

Working less in the 90s, Lemmon still stole the show with a blistering one-take monologue as a feckless, angst-ridden father in Robert Altman's Short Cuts and as a hapless salesman in Glengarry Glen Ross.

His last feature appearance was opposite old cohort Matthau in 1998's The Odd Couple 2, though he provided a ghostly voice-over last year in Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance.

At the close of Some Like it Hot, Lemmon attempts to provide his billionaire suitor with unarguable reasons why he cannot marry him. He reveals that he is, in fact, a man. "Nobody's perfect," quips his still clearly smitten fiancee. Perhaps not. But for millions of cinemagoers, Jack Lemmon was as close as it gets.